super bowl in new orleans. they made themselves available to hordes of r radio clowns. reporters from all over the world were sent there to report on the good, the bad, and the intoxicated. >> they basically have left the people walking around with this glazed look in their eyes. >> hey. >> like this one behind me. >> how are you doing? >> i'm from california. >> very nice to meet you. >> 49ers. >> you're going to do an interview with us? >> sure. >> we were just talking about here along bourbon street, the std rate. how long have you had an std? >> i don't have an std. >> why did you want to talk? >> oh, my goodness. >> i'm so sorry. >> are you serious? >> nothing to be ashamed of. >> i don't have an std. >> okay. >> i don't have an std. >> anyway, i've been taking care of that in my own little way.

>> 49ers. >> yeah. she won't approach any more tv cameras. who do you like in the super bowl? >> super bowl. uhhhhhh. i think i'll be fair and balanced and say nothing. >> only one california team. >> big football fan, judy. that's a wrap on news watch for this week. thanks to everybody. i'm jon scott. we'll see you again next week. thanks for watching. you going to bet on the game? watch out your government may watch out your government may >> john: your poker game may be illegal, but government likes to ban things like ticket scalping. >> we've got to get resellers out of the process soit some people want to ban mixed martial

arts. school cheerleading is more dangerous than mma. >> john: how is the ban on performance-enhancing drugs working out? with so much money in sports, should college stars be paid? >> no. no. >> definitely not. >> john: let's ask a team owner. what if government ran sports? >> no team would be good. big sports, big business, that's our show tonight. and now, john stossel. >> john: sun zillions of with yoyouwill make a belt on the sur bowl. if you're a baltimore fan, your team is expected to lose. how can you make a bet that's fair to you? by taking the point spreads which at the moment is about three and a half points. that means san francisco could win and you could still win your bet on baltimore. this makes betting more interesting and makes watching the gamewi more fun. fine. except where does that point spread come from?

from bookies, professional bet takers. that's illegal in most of america, and yet these point spreads are everywhere. billions will be bet on this year's game, most of it illegally. isn't it time we legalize gambling? i asked people in times square. >> should betting on sports be allowed? >> never. >> it encourages people, poor people, to spend money they don't have. >> john: america's politicians they've banned many gambling like gambling on the internet.ambling they say things like it's not the right moral choice or sound public policy. there are enough dysfunctional families. my guests tonight say the government should get out of the way. annie duke is a former professionaprofessional poker pd we have the author of gambling, a healthy bet. a healthy bet? what are you talking about. i like to gamble, but i don't think it's healthy.

>> it's real healthy. it's healthy for the individual and for society. you haven't heard this narrative, this tale before. >> john: no. >> because the research money is -- goes to those people who say look, society is going to hell in hand basket. for moral reasons or because it calls all this addictive problem gambling. the truth is the evidence doesn't back it up. it's wonderful entertainment and recreation. >> john: how is it healthy? healthy because it helps our brains and it helps our hearts. older folks who play bingo, very popular. there's actually now proof that it helps the stay alzheimer's, degenerative brain disease. you're laughing, but it's true. the evidence is there but it's not been looked for because there's no government funding in making this argument. >> john: you also say it teaches kids and everybody about risk, about probability. >> if we gamble, we learn to deal with risk, to understand risk, and that's why i think actually kids shouldea start to

appreciate gambling earlier rather than it being held off the. >> john: annie, you don't buy this healthy part, but -- >> it's not so much whether i buy it or not. when i teach decision making and i talk about probability, i use gambling as an example. i don't think it's jermaine to the argument. when people argue that we should ban it because it's immoral or general harm to society where they're notn really identifying that a person is doin anyone, tg back in sort of this amorphous societal harm, that when you start arguing the other side and saying but there's good things about gambling that you're lending weight to the arguments that really should be germane to the legislative issue. >> the probabl problem is the ml argument against bla gambling hs run out of political steam. what the public health folks have done is taken accus cues fm tobacco and obesity and said

it's a medical problem. it costs all of society, etc., etc. >> john: annie, as a professional poker player, you've seen this sort of casino sleaze. >> sure. >> john: people are chain smoking. some people do lose all their money. >> it's true, but it's a very small minority, so it's wil less than 1% of people who engage in any kind of gambling activity that have a gambling problem. that's compared to alcohol where 7 to 9% of people, for example, use alcohol have issues. it's a really, really small problem, but even if those peoplele are having problems, they're making those9% choices r themselves as con sensual adults. they're not hurting anybody, and i don't think we're supposed to legislate to protect some small minority from their own bad decision and hurt the majority who do it in a healthy way and they really enjoy it in the same way they enjoy going to a restaurant or a movie. >> in cultures like the british osh or the australians where they have more gabbing bling, the problem isn't any greater. >> john: it's assumed if we

legalize, it will get worse. >> they did an experiment. if we have gambling on the internet and in people's home, society will fall apart. >> john: if you're alone at home. >> why haven't they done the same experiment with on line shopping? so there's all these people going broke with on line shopping. we're not trying to ban that. >> with any prohibition, people who want to do it do it anyway. >> right. >> there are all kinds of avenues to gamble. the question is is it legal and regulated and the government gets its share of the tax or is it under the table, shady, unregulated, and the consumer doesn't have any protection? >> john: it's harder to deal with the problem gamblers and hehelp them when it's illegal. >> that's right. >> it's harder to keep children from gam ling on line when it's illegal as well. >> john: we tried to get opponents tonight, and they didn't want to come. one group, stop predatory gambling, addicted gamblers are abandoning their children in casino parking lots around the world. >> scare stories are everywhere,

but it's anecdotal. the real evidence shows the extent of the problem is massively overstated and critically we never hear about the positive side of gambling which is true and far outweighs the negative. >> i think the issue is we don't ledges late by anec ab anecdote. > >> john: we do. >> we shouldn't. fair point. there was an an eck d anecdote e slinging around about a kid who lost a lot of money on line and then robbed a bank. they were blaming that on internet gaming. when we look in the uk which has very good statistics on this thing, preinternet gaming, preand post, there wasn't any increase in the percentage of gamblers who had issues. these aren't the causes of the problem. when we start saying well, any timeca somebody robs a bank, we have to look back at what caused them to do that, if it was a shopping problem or a gambling problem or you know, whatever it was, we're going to ban the thing that made them make that

bad decision. it's a huge slippery slope. where are you going to draw the line? we have a really good line of are you doing direct harm? is it consensual. iif we go beyond that several steps back like you might hurt your family, we'll stop people from selling doughnuts to people who are overweight, for example. >> that may be coming. very unknown to mr. and mrs. american taxpayer. they've actually paid for studies by their federal government into what distinguishes ga gamblers from non-gamblers. the american government found there is no difference. well, there's one slight difference. gamblers are more associatable, more neighborly, more involved in their community, and are more likely to donate to charity. those are the only differences. >> john: okay. i want to see these studies. i believe you, but i just haven't seen them. now it's super bowl week. we're talking about legalizing sports betting. lots of opposition from the people who run sports. david stern, nba commissioner.

>> the one thing i'm certain of, in new jersey where they've just passed a law to legalize this, has no idea what it's doing and doesn't care because all it's interested in is making a buck. >> john: if there's more betting, there's mortemations to say throw this game. >> even so, if you're legalizing it, everything is in the light and you're less likely to have that happen. where you actually get more problems is in college sports where they don't pay the players. >> the push to have these restrictions -- > c >> john: which we'll talk about later tonight. >> whether it's sports betting or on line gambling, it's all about protecting another domestic industry. >> the nfl, the nba, the national hockey league, the ncaa, they've all joined a lawsuit against new jersey. gambling threatens the integrity of sports. fundamentally at odds with the principle that the outcomeor of the contest must be perceived by the public a s determined solely on the basis of honest athletic competition. >> they have their heads in the sand. you can bet on a game in las

vegas, new jersey, and there's a tremendous amount of illegal gambling going on. you can just pay the players according to what they earn. >> the most ar dent supporters of all of those fans are also the most ardent legal gamblers on the sports. >> nobody will watch football without the spread. it's published in "usa today". like for them to say that gambling is somehow hurting the sport, that's a completely, like, species argument because people are watching the game because of the spread. >> john: i am. >> thank you. half the states, weirdly, even ban social gambling in some form, a friendly game. i occasionally play poker and still legal in my state, fortunately, as no one profits by running the game. i asked my fellow players about the bans in some states, and the ban on internet poker. >> we are intelligent enough to know our limits and leave the government out of it.

>> we're not all mentally and psychologically strong enough to governor ourselves. >> john: the liberals want government to do something. >> the addictive element of gambling forces, you know, the government to step in because it is addictive. >> that's stupid. smoking cigarettes is addictive behavior. they don't prevent us from smoking in our home. they don't prevent us from drinking in our own home. >> john: i think the liberal guy made the argument that the politicians make. protect us from ourselves. >>vi absolutely, because whether we're adults or children, we are unable to make rational decisions for ourselves. >> john: or for children. the casino said he's a kid, we won't let him do it. >> the bigger issue is what is the slippery slope you're getting on when you try to protect people from their own addictions or own bad decisions. you have to start banning bigger problems in front of it. all of a sudden you think that you're protecting people from their own bad decisions, but you just have no freedom to make

your choices. what i think is a bad decision might be different than what you think is a bad decision. >> john: one last point to me shows the hypocracy of government. the state lottery. we have state lottery because there was a numbers racket. organized rhyme would let people pick a number and somebody would win $100 or $1,000. we can't do this, this is gambling. we have to stop it. we can't stop it. maybe if we compete with them since we're: legal, we'll drive them out of business. nowim we have state lotteries ad worse.e they take 50% of the bet, and mostly from poor people, and they run these disgusting commercials which suggest give up your job, make a bet, and happiness comes from having a lot of money that you didn't earn. >> the government's cornered the market on bad odds. >> the commercials and the billboards for lotteries are aimed at poor neighborhoods and poor people, so they're the worst offenders. ga gambling iso

different than any other form of economic enterprise. when the government runs it, it doesn't go so swell, particularly for the consumer and taxpayer. >> and there's no competition on the lottery. if i go to las vegas and there's competition on the slot machines, the worst slot machine i find is taking 5 cents on the dollar. the government owns the lottery. they can take 50 cents on the dollar. if there were competitors, i guarantee you would get a much higher return. >> john: five cents from the casino, which is a scam, but 50% from my government. thank you, annie duke, and patrick. coming up, ticket scal pipping, should that be legal? what about steroids? should college athletes be paid? that's next. should college athletes be paid? next. next. law [ male announcer ] how do you make america's favorite recipes? just begin with america's favorite soups. bring out chicken broccoli alfredo. or best-ever meatloaf. go to campbellskitchen.com for recipes, plus a valuable coupon.

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>> john: notre dame linebacker manti t'eo might have made millions this year without concocting a fake girlfriend. duke basketball forward mason plumlee would have made millions, too. they're worth at least that to their colleges, because their colleges make millions off their services. some football teams bring in 50 million in profit selling tickets, media rights, clothing. alabama's football coach was

paid five and a half million dollarsll last year. college sports is big business, but the colleges pay the players nothing. nada. top players get scholarships. they don't have to pay tuition, but no cash because college is supposed to be amateur time. and that's not fair, says dr. watkins, a professor of entrepreneurship at syracuse university, so why isn't it fair? that's the way it's done. >> well, you know, i think that the burden of proof is on the ncaa for the most part. i think -- >> john: the ncaa is the institution that sort of runs college sports, and they have a rule no money. >> well, they do give the player a scholarship. my question would be if you went to nick saban and said we're going to take away your $5 million salary and give you a free education for you and your family, how would he feel about that? >> john: the football coach made five and a half million. >> exactly. exactly. so i think that what we have to realize is that we live in america, and we live in a society where we have things called labor rights, where

people are allowed to negotiate their salaries, and it doesn't make any sense that you see these games, they're making millions of dollars. nobody turns on a college basketball game to see the coach. they turn the game on to see the players, so why is that player's mother, father, etc. not allowed to share in the revenue? i think that's a really important question we have to start asking. >> john: but there's not much of a movement for it. a few sports writers talk about it, but it's not like the college players are organizing or complaining, even. >> oh, they complain. they complain. if you go and do a survey an get the players to speak freely on the issuing, the ones who understand how much money is being made, they are very resentful of this. you remember the fab five from the university of michigan. chris weber talks about going to stores and seeing his jersey on sale for $100 and he couldn't afford mcdonald's. that's a bit crazy. nobody gives away that kind of money to be nice, right. you have to kind of go in and take it. i think the quickest way to get the fair result would be for the players to get to the final four

and say look, we're not going on the court until you give our families some of this money because guess what? if they don't show up, there is no show. everybody that makes millions of dollars on these guys, they don't get paid. i guarantee you that would bring them to the negotiating table pretty quick. >> john: i agree with you that these athletes deserve to be paid. it should be a market. most americans do not agree with us. here are some we asked. >> should college athletes be paid? >> no. >> no. >> no. >> no. i don't think they should. >> absolute not. >> why? >>st they go to school to learn. >> it will take away from the greatness of college sports. >> john: taking away from the greatness of sports. they're playing for their team. not bucks. >> well, you know, we live in a free country that has a free labor market where people can go negotiate their salaries. if you're a 9-year-old kid and you're going to star in a block buster film that goes and makes half a billion dollars, they with aay you scholarship, right, so -- > >> john: they can. it's just consenting adult child

parent whatever the deal is. >> they could, right. >> john: whatever contract they make. >> right. whatever the contract is that they make. what happens with the ncaa, in my opinion, is that they are allowed to operate in a way that controls the labor market in such a way it would be illegal in almost any other industry. wal-mart can't get together with target and kmart and agree to restrict workers' salaries to $10 an hour. they can't do that. the justice department will step in. the ncaa will not regulate or improveca itself. an outside force has to come in and bust itse up and say eithero this the right way or do it a different way and turn it into a professional sports league if you want or go back to the fundamentals of academic integrity which i think is equally fine. >> john: we did try to get the ncaa to appear on this program and defend its position but they didn't call us back. >> i'm not surprised that no one from the ncaa came to defend that point of view. they know they're wrong. the former executive director

once he left the post came out and said look, these guys should be paid like everybody else. it's funny. everybody who says the players shouldn't get money, most of these players are making tons of money. they always have money to give the coach his million dollar salary. i think the love of the game is a wonderful thick. i think most of these athletes have that, but we have to agree that it's wrong that you have a star player whose school is going to make $20 million if he leads the team to a championship and the coach is going to get this hugeth bonus if he wins, bt yet the player's mother can't come to the game because she can't afford a bus ticket for the game. i've seen that. i just think that's patently unfair. >> john: i asked the famousfoott this.ho i said you're ripping the players off. he said we're not ripping them off. we're giving them an opportunity to get an education that's valuable and per effect their skill. >> imagine if thep nfl could get

away with paying their athletes with scholarship. i think it's time for them to acknowledge themselves for what they are. they are a professional sports league. you hear coaches say all the time i expect my athletes to be professionals. i've been on college campuses for 20 years, and from what i've seen, an athlete lives a different life. they have a different set of precious from the student body. >> john: they're told to take serch courses, their time is all in practice. >> i've had players say i wanted to major in engineering but my football coach told me he that doesn't fit with my football swedge. >> john: if they were paid giving the crazy laws we have in america, there could be some odd wrongles which george will brought up. if football players are paid, female hockey players must be too because of title ix gender equity. >> allowing players to be released from the restriction

that keeps them from going outside the university to get paid. if i'm a star on the basketball team and i can go to the local car dealership and say buy bob's cars and bob will pay me money to do that, why can't i go downo that? would should i be forced to live in poverty because there's a stack of rules this high protecting the ncaa's revenue extreme. when you need that many rules to protect someone's money, chances are you're doing something you shouldn't be doing. >> john: thankge you. up next, some athletes improve their performance by taking steroids. ofs course, our government says that's a job for congress. is it? >> everyone in baseball is responsible. the owners, the commissioner, the union, and the players. >> we want steroids and other dangerous drugs out of sports, period. sports. period. ♪ alright, let's go. sports. ♪ shimmy, shimmy chocolate. ♪ shimmy, shimmy chocolate. ♪ we, we chocolate cross over.

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>> john: i think lance armstrong is a despicable slug not because he injected drugs like tess toft roan or did blood doping to improve his performance. i don't care if an adult does things like that. i hate lance armstrong because he cheated and then threatened people, threatened to sue them if they told the truth. he's a liar and a bully, but the drugs themselves, so what? i don't even know why they're illegal or the government's business, but as usual, my opinion is minority opinion. >> should the government investigate steroids in sports? >> i think so, yeah. of course. >> everyone should be drug tested. >> and it's harmful. >> for the future of our nation, the government has to take a stand to show that there is no cheating in anything. >> john: for the future of our nation,o government must take a stand. nick gillespie pee from reaso fv disagrees. why? if an athlete dopes his blood, he's cheating.

>> you're right that lance armstrong is a liar and a bully, but it's categorically wrong to focus on performance-enhancing drugs is the only way that athletes gain competitive advantages over their colleague. there were times in the '50s and '60s when track coaches came up with innovative training regimes that they kept secret or used on only their athletes. is that unfair competition? is using certain times of technology, greg lemond, the first american he to win the huge create critic of lance armstrong. he beat a competitor by using technological advantages that the frenchman chose not to. the man he beat used drugs. he later admitted to using both descroidz and amphetamines, so the idea that drugs are the magic pill that will take any of us or me to the top of the tour de france just isn't true, but they get vilified because people

are afraid of drugs in a way they're not afraid of eating certain types of diets or training or whatever. >> john: i would add to your list of performance enhancers. lasik eye surgery. tiger woods improved his vision and presumably improved his game. >> why isn't that considered as morally reprehensible. there have been baseball pitchers who had reconstructive surgery on their throwing arms where afterwards they can throw fasterer than they used to be. is that bad? athletes are competitors first and foremost. they're always looking for an edge. particularly in something like the tour de france going back to 1903, people have been doping the entire existence of the race. the only difference is that in the mid '60s it became illegal, but thehe activity nevr ceased. lance armstrong, the one place he didn't have a competitive advantage over his competitive set was in using drugs because they all use them. >> john: but what about the cheating part? some don't use them.

>> some don't get caught. >> john: they all use them in bicycle racing, apparently? >> i mean, it is virtually ubiquitous in various things like professional sports and what not. >> john: i don't think they're all using, and if s some do, soe don't, it's a form of cheating. >> is it cheating if people do extra sprints at the end of a practice. >>ig it's legal. >> not all drugs are banned. rather, certaindi drugs are banned. for instance, somebody like mark mcgwire, he was openly using certain types of performance-enhancing drugs, and they were considered legal. a couple years later, they were not. it becomes gray area once you start drawing bright lines about this is legal and moral, this is illegal and cheating. >> john: another difference. people say these drugs make

people into freaks. they really are dangerous, change your bodies. >> well, you know he, there are two ways to think about that. one is that we like to see freaks. we like to see freaks like lance armstrong, an absolute freak of nature. the better he was at cycling, however he got that way, the more people watched the tour de france. when we had people that weren't as good as him, fewer people watched. that's not a bad thing. no question that a lot of people and athletes do real damage to their bodies by using drugs. if you care about that, the first thinged you should do is n athletics becauseth the problem with a football player is not that he's taking some steroid. the problem is that he's banging his head against a brick wall for his entire professional career. if you want to make the drugs safer and if you want to make the usage more wise, you should bring it up above ground so that doctors and coaches and advisors can openly deal with what's going on, what works, what doesn't work and kindop of regulate it not by government but by common practice and best practice. >> john: and how would that work? i look at the list of things that the people say can be

caused by, say, steroids. >> uh-huh. >> john: it goes from acne and testicle shrinkage to diabetes, diarrhea, kidney damage, death. >> i don't disagree with what you're saying. that's already happened. nothing gets m made better or safer by saying this is completely illegal so the only people it will be available to are people who are risk takers who do it in the shadow of darkness. >> john: if it were legal, there would be sports that would say none of this, some would say yes, you can do it. we'd have guidelines, we'd have choices, it would be out in the open and it would be safer. >> there are already cases of that. for instance, body building which is one of the sports that really kind of main lined steroid use at the beginning. there's a natural circuit and an enhanced circuit, and you know, that way audiences can choose and athletes can choose. generally speaking, the missourir choices people have, the better we all are. >> john: thank you, nick gillespie, of reason magazine.

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>> john: that's mixed martial arts, mixed because it's not wrestling or boxing, it's fighting, and to win, you need to be good at all the martial arts. yes, it's violent, but so is boxing. so is football. in my state, new york, and in connecticut, bocking and football are legal but mixed martial arts is banned. i can go to madison square garden to watch boxers smash each other in the face. i can take little kids there to watch fake wrestling where people pretend to do creepier things t to each other and somef

the hired help is so out of control, they do things like this. >> i think this is fake. >> you think it's fake? what's that? is that fake, huh? >> that was years ago when a pro wrestler took offense at my pointing out that professional wrestling is fake and he beat me up. my point is i don't understand why boxing and violent fake wrestling is okay, but mixed martial arts or mma, as it's known, is not. lawrence epstein wonders, too. he's the chief operating officer of the ultimate fighting championship, and he joins us from las vegas where they have a big event this weekend. so lawrence, why can't i go he to a ufc event here in my home town? >> well, in 1997 the new york state legislature passed a law that potentially banned the sport of mixed martial arts. frankly, the sport that existed back then is different than the sport that exists today. with all the reforms that have addition ofin the sport, weight classes, time limits for

rounds, proper health and medical safety testing for all the athletes, the sport that exists today is not the same sport that existed in 1997. however, the law that existed in '97 is still in effect today, and for the last five years we've been trying to get that overturned and, of course, have the state of new york regulate the sport of mixed martial arts. >> john: that's what i don't get. it's been 15 years. your organization is making tons of money ifen other places benefitting cities. it's growing faster. it'see bigger than boxing on tv now, and yet my state politicians who are supposed to represent me keep saying no, we're going to be -- we in connecticut, we're smarter than the other 48 states? >> well, part of it is an education process, educating people about health and safety, educating people about the events. >> john: it's been 15 years. are my politicians stupider than they are in the rest of the country? say? do they say you haven't kissed our ring? you haven't given us enough

money? >> there's no doubt that the politicians in new york have been very deliberate as they've taken a look at this issue. we need to get a vote on the floor, and to date, we've not had an opportunity on the assembly floor to get a vote. the assembly majority leader said i think it's bar bar i can. we're taking steps to reduce bullying in schools. legalizing m ma would endorse an activity that's blatantly violent. >>nobt that type of statement is something we've heard for years and years. the reality is when you look at the facts andse what the sport s about and our safety records, those comments are just simply incorrect. >> john: you're getting smarter about trying to influence my bullheaded politicians. i see that you sent out your very good looking female champion to negotiate with them and one assemblyman said the proponents are getting savvier. they send a beautiful woman than a bulky, threatening man. was that you? >> i don't think it was me, but

rhonda is a classic example of what an mma athlete is all about. rhonda is a long time judo olympic player. she actually participated in two olympics and was a bronze medalist in the sydney olympics. she's a classic example of an individual that's part of the organization. >> john: john mccain called your sport human dog fighting. he's changed his tune, saying they've cleaned up the sport. he's still not a fan, but they've made progress. you talk to these guys. i try not to because they drive me crazy. do they say we haven't had time to vote? what's in their head? they're losing millions of dollars. >> new york is a special place. it's certainly taking a bit longer for all this information to sink in. hopefully it will sink in this year. >> john: well, good luck.

i hope it does. thank you, lawrence epstein. later we talk to billionaire mark cuban about what would happen if the government ran sports. next, ticket scalping. what you think you know may not be so. red lobster's 30 shrimp. wow, that's a lot of shrimp. [ male announcer ] it's red lobster's 30 shrimp! for $11.99 pair any two shrimp selections on one plate! like mango jalapeño shrimp and parmesan crunch shrimp. just $11.99. offer ends soon! i'm ryon stewart, and i sea food diffently. mommy's having a french fry. yes she is, yes she is. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. 100% vegetable juice, with three of your daily vegetable servings in every little bottle. for their annual football trip. that's double miles you can actually use. tragically, their ddy got sacked by blackouts.

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>> john: have you got your ticket to the super bowl? no? it's not too late. you can still buy some from a ticket scalper. not just those guys going want to buy some tickets who hang around outside the stadium but internet sites. one called stubhub still has thousands of super bowl tickets listed for sale. of course, the ticket will set you back a couple thousand bucks, in some cases, $100,000, which is the reason many people say ticket scalping should be illegal. >> should ticket scalping be allowed? >> no. i don't think so. >> no. >> no. then it's hard to buy tickets. you can't get a ticket for yourself. >> john: right. if stubhub bias up,00 up -- buyp thousands of tickets, i can't get one. it's a ripoff. government should ban scalping and sometimes they do. thiss economist said that's simple minded and counter

productive. this is minority opinion. what are you talking about? >> the reality is we have a limited number of seats and a lot of people who want to buy them. how do we allocate them? sometimes tickets are sold far in advance and we don't know how valuable they'll be or what people will value them at. often times the secondary market steps in to sell high value tickets at a high price, and sometimes you can buy below face value or above face valuable. its an as an ar bybitrage oppor. >> john: how is that good for the consumer? >> some people have tickets who don't value them as much as those who do value them. people who sell to so-called scalpers are the people who say i don't really want to go to this as much. i have a friend who has season philly tickets. he sells them every year to fun his purchase. he watches it on television. >> john: the witch go to the

game -- the rich go to the games games. >> making sure equality in getting tickets is sort of at the bottom level of things we need to be worrying about. >> some sports teams are using the ticket scalpers. >> if you're a baseball team and you don't think you're going to be very good and you want season ticket holders to come, you set your price low. all of a sudden you have a big gamelo coming to town and you didn't realize it, and all these scalpers are getting rich off your tickets. what a lot of teams did was they went and said if you're going to sell your tickets, you sell them back to us, and then we'll sell them on the secondary market. it's interesting where this first started was with the chicago cubs. they have one of the smallest st stadiums in major league baseball. they realized hey, we need to make as much money as we can so we can be a profitable franchise, so they set up a secondary market for their own tickets. joilt still, the politicians are often upset about this. after a bruce springsteen concert where fans complained they couldn't get tickets at face value, my always quick to pander senator, senator chuck

schumer, promised he would solve the problem. >> we've got to get these resellers out of the process so your average ticket buyer has a fair shot at purchasing a ticket at a fair price, and my new legislation does just that. >> john: which didn't pass, fortunately, but a fair price. seems reasonable? well, it depends on what we mean by a fair price. again, we have to remember. this is some arbitrary face value put on that ticket, and so i'm not sure what type of legislation you can put to solve the problem of we have to al allocate a scarce resource. who is going to get in first, people who are willing to pay more, maybe let more beautiful people in first, maybe let of certain races or ethnic groups in. we have a fundamental problem of scarcity. prices are a fundamental and peaful way to solve it. >> john: and probably the fairest way. >> this is something that politicians often pick on because even in a nonpartisan

sense, everyone hates paying higher prices. there's a book called defending the indefensible that sort of brought my rain around to some libertarian ideas. one was in defense of the ticket scalper, but there is a downside. with last-second purchases, how do you know your ticket is legitimate? >> watch closely as this man hand over $100 for two tickets. minutes later, he finds out some bad news. when he gets to the gate, he finds out his tickets are fake. he tried to run after the scalper, but he was nowhere in sight. >> john: at last year's super bowl, about 200 people were turned away because their tickets turned out to be phony. what do youe do about that? >> you have a thriving secondary legal market. you can go to stubhub and know there's a reputation here and they'll back up their product. if you don't get in, we're going to refund your money, we're going to figure out a way to get you in. that's one of the real downsides when you create a black market and people really want

something. the black market will find a way to get it to people. if you're already doing illegal things, well, taking advantage of eager concert goers or sports fans is something that you're ripe for the target. >> john: politicians banning things doesn't usually make it tter. michigan, massachusetts, arkansas already have laws against scalping, but they're never enforced. rarely enforced. >> it's one of those things where people who buy the tickets are generally happy because they wanted to go, and people who sell the tickets are generally happy because they wanted to sell it. >> john: on this happy note, let's end. thank you, j.c. bradbury. next, what if the government ran sports? it wouldn't be fun. transports? transports? -- ran sports you know how painful heartburn can be. for fast, long lasting relief, use doctor recommended gaviscon®. only gaviscon® forms a protective barrier that helps block stomach acid from splashing up- relieving the pain quickly. try fast, long lasting gaviscon®.

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>> john: if you watch the super bowl this weekend, thing about this. two teams will fight and then when one wins, they'll shake hands and move on. lots of money will be made. people will have fun, and participates does so voluntarily. but what would happen if government ran sports? i put that question to mark cuban, billionaire owner of a former world champion basketball team. >> if government ran basketball, first of all, no team would be able to be good. the minute one team showed that they were better than another, we'd have to go back and reevaluate and move people around so that things were fair. you wouldn't start a game with a

jump ballr. because somebody mit lose the jump ball, right, so you have to have a coin toss in basketball. > >> john: somebody would lose that. >> at least it wouldn't be because of someone's effort. you don't want someone to look bad or you have to give them a little badge to show them that it was it okay that you tried to get the jump ball. > >> john: okay. that's a little extreme. probably wouldn't be that bad. pro sports have fairness rules, too. the best teams get the last draft picks and there's revenue sharing to keep a league competitive, and it's all voluntary. and cuban's thought experiment about government sports has truth to it. >> quarters wouldn't be 12 minutes long because, you know, you've got to make sure that everybody has an equal chance and you'd probably have to make sure that each team ran the same number of plays. you know, it would just go on and on and on. >> john: is that a fair comparison? >> without question. the american way is to go out and take chances, to create opportunities, to take the initiative and a lot of what we see in government is about watering that down. >> john: all to make it more